By Jackie Burrell Contra Costa Times
On Friday, the indie movie based on Kidd's story about a motherless child and a trio of honey-making sisters will finally make its way to the silver screen. But despite its book-club-favorite status and a star-studded cast — headed by Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson — the movie's path has been nearly as poignant and serendipitous as the book itself.
Sitting in a plush lounge in San Francisco's Ritz-Carlton Hotel recently, director/screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood relaxed with her young star before the Mill Valley Film Festival opening. The novel, which sold 4.5 million copies, is on many schools' reading lists. Fanning, 14, calls it "a great book for people my age."
She and her director talked about what it was like filming a story set against powerful civil rights-era themes just as Barack Obama was racking up his first big triumphs. Prince-Bythewood also addressed the motifs of motherlessness, abandonment and redemption that run through the characters' lives — and her own.
"The Secret Lives of Bees" tells the story of a young girl, 14-year-old Lily Owens, who runs from an abusive father and the deeply held belief that she is, somehow, "unlovable."
Prince-Bythewood, a Pacific Grove native, was on a journey of her own, seeking her birth
mother and trying to understand why she had been given up as a child when her older brother had not. But when she was offered the project seven years ago, she hadn't read the book and turned the picture down.
Two years ago she heard that another director had signed on, and suddenly she was consumed with "this overwhelming feeling of 'That's my movie!'" She read the novel that night.
"The book just wrecked me," she says. "Oh my God, I gave up this opportunity. It's about motherhood, sisters, learning to love yourself. I said those same words — 'I'm unlovable' — when I found my birth mother."
Then, almost miraculously, everything fell into place. The movie's director walked, and all that was left was the book and its star, Fanning, who was finally old enough to play the role.
"In retrospect, it happened at the right time," she says. "You grow a lot in five, six years. Being adopted was part of my journey. To pour myself into this script (helped me) get over the last vestiges of that tough time."
In a matter of weeks, Prince-Bythewood had her stars — all working for virtually no pay — and a steady stream of cast and crew showing up with dog-eared copies of the book.
"Construction guys coming in with the book," the filmmaker says. "You don't expect that at all. Everyone came in with this love of the project." The idea was to merge Kidd's vision as a white woman who grew up in the South, with Prince- Bythewood's African-American perspective, while remaining true to the book.
And it's all there, from the Pepto-Bismol-pink Boatwright house to the Black Madonna honey jar labels, designed by renowned African-American artist Charles Bibbs. The one noticeable change is in the character of June Boatwright, the tightly controlled, cello-playing sister portrayed by Alicia Keys as a younger, more politically savvy character living in this pivotal time in American history.
"I really infused myself into June," says Prince- Bythewood.
She worked to get her young cast into the mind-set of a historical period most of them were too young to have experienced firsthand. She sent her actors giant gift bags crammed with study materials, including Spike Lee's documentary, "4 Little Girls," about the racially motivated 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church.
"'4 Little Girls' was an amazing, amazing film," says Fanning. "You can't help but feel it."
And then there was the matter of bees, who play a recurring role in the book and movie. It was so cold, says Prince-Bythewood, the crew had to truck in 60,000 bees from Florida and stash the hives in a greenhouse.
"We called it Bee-lagio," she says.
Intellectually, there were plenty of reasons not to worry about being surrounded by swarms of buzzing, hovering bees. Bees don't sting unless they feel threatened.
"I can say all this," says Prince-Bythewood, "but it's still bees."
So Fanning, Latifah and Tristan Wilds, who plays August Boatwright's godson, Zachary Taylor, were sent to bee school to train with Julian Wooten — dubbed "the bee whisperer" on the set — to prepare them for their scenes working with hives, honey and 60,000 fuzzy, buzzing extras.
"They threw me in," says Fanning, with a grin. "You kind of separate yourself from your body. They can't get to you."
Fanning was fine with it, but Latifah and Wilds had to learn to work with the bees barehanded.
"All my research," says Prince-Bythewood, "said that real beekeepers did not wear gloves. Latifah and Tristan were like, 'Yeah, right.'"
Wooten had Tristan's gloves off in a matter of days, and Latifah's hands were bare within an hour. In the end, only three people were ever stung at Bee-lagio. And the scenes that unfold onscreen are ethereal and magical. Bees swirl and spiral around Fanning's face as her eyes fill with wonder.
But stinging insects were nothing compared with the challenges facing the cast in a drugstore-improv exercise in 1960s racism. Despite her Oscar for "Dream Girls" and her role in "Sex in the City," Hudson is still a newcomer to acting. She didn't know what "improv" meant and had no idea that the extras hired by Prince-Bythewood were behaving according to a harsh 1964 script.
"She was getting more and more upset," says Fanning. "She didn't know it wasn't real."
It was only the director's strict admonition not to hit anyone that saved an extra who used the N-word when he told Hudson to get down from the whites-only ice cream counter. It was a potent exercise in ostracism and being demeaned, not only for Hudson but for everyone who watched.
But what occurred in the real world during the whirlwind 34 days of filming in North Carolina was pure serendipity. As Obama racked up his South Carolina primary triumph, suddenly the set came alive with the same sense of possibility that took place with the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 — the idea, says Prince-Bythewood, that "someday" might be "today."
They weren't just making a movie about a girl and the nurturing women aided her, says Prince-Bythewood, they were "making a film about a time when the world was changing, at a time when the world is changing."
Contact Jackie Burrell at jburrell@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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